The Pills of the Digital Hero’s Journey
Let’s start from the beginning: the legendary, iconic scene from the Matrix where Neo must make his choice. The amount of deep philosophical and ideological discussion this scene alone has created is a testament to how wonderful the original film is. But before I begin this essay, I want to point out the simplest of facts: this scene is, at its core, the call to adventure.
The Hero’s Journey is what Joseph Campbell identified as the outline for practically every human story, and early on it, the Hero is urged to leave their familiar world and go into the unknown to achieve or retrieve something. At first, the Hero is hesitant and refuses the call but later on finds the wisdom and courage, usually brought out by a mentor, to go forth into the unknown. In the Matrix, the possibility to refuse is represented by the blue pill, blue representing calmness, security and passivity, and the red pill, accepting the adventure, the color of danger and passion.
(Notice that while the common illustration is a simple circle, I chose this one that begins a spiral because the return with the “Reward” or “Gift of the Goddess” in this version is “Special Knowledge” which results in Ascension — this is often mentioned in Red Pill online communities as the end goal, and I found that very interesting.)
It’s also worth noting the etymology of “Matrix,” which comes from the Latin mater. The Matrix is a womb (or breeding female, a fiction producing machine). And in the Hero’s Journey, that’s precisely what the initial familiar world is. The comforts of the material world, of a mother’s love. The drive to go forth into the unknown and conquer is an opposing masculine drive to the passive feminine one. So it’s no coincidence that Neo’s familiar world is a digital womb, and when he decides to leave it behind, he finds himself in a dangerous, cold world with awful food. Yet, in the warm company of real, live people.
These archetypal stories reflect the actual journeys every individual must take, from the first group of people who left Africa in search of something beyond what they knew, to a regular young adult moving out for college. This is the repeating theme of humanity’s heroism. And it has to do as much with literal physical journeys as psychic ones. So, in this digital world, how does the heroic journey look like?
The digital realm is ruled by information, so the holy grail for the King Arthurs of today is nothing more than the piece of information for which the digital hero must conquer online jungles, nets, labyrinths, and mazes; everything to find the ultimate piece of knowledge that when brought home with them into the real world will finally shake the status quo and the dreading feeling of stagnation.
Secret world organizations run by the perverse elite, vaccines that cause autism, aliens controlling the government, flat Earth, and, the most iconic red pill, women’s true nature, among other examples. It can all be boiled down to finding the hidden knowledge that the world as previously known is an illusion, and seeing it for what it truly is. But this is very rarely done for the sake of curiosity and the actual truth. It is rather a means to satisfy the drive of heroism. When something doesn’t feel quite right in the world, we feel a tension that pushes us towards action to change things; go out, learn, live, feel, grow, achieve, fail, win, mature. However, this doesn’t occur in the physical realm anymore but is rather redirected into the digital, like almost all human drives these days.
And here is how the eternal story diverges from our current one: First (and this is very ironic), when you take the Red Pill in the movie, it takes you out of the Matrix, not further down into it. Moreover, it’s a one-time thing. Neo does not need to take the red pill every 24 hours or anything like that. So why is it that just a single video or article isn’t enough? Why the constant consumption of content? If you are so convinced to knowing the truth, turn off your computer and take action to change your life accordingly. Clearly, this does not happen very often. Here lies the trap.
In his Black Pill video, MemeAnalysis pointed out that the pill symbolized an almost instantly digestible, viral ideology. This is true, but there is something else I want to add that I feel was hiding right under our noses. What do you, fellow Western, take pills for? Imagine you start suffering from depression or very annoying lower back pains. This would be indicative that there is something wrong with your current lifestyle, perhaps too much time sitting in front of the computer and too little time deadlifting (with proper form); a change in posture and habits is necessary. However, any sort of uncomfortable effort has become unacceptable in this age of science. So to make the illness, the sickness, the pain go away you need to look no further than a mere pill that will fix everything wrong.
Our Matrix, like the adverts for these medical pills, promises us to fix our problems by doing nothing except exploring her realm, staying within her womb, searching and interacting with the avatars of others who are after the same promise: the digital Holy Grail of knowledge about the outside world. To take “the red pill” is to consume red pill content. It offers explanations, simplifications, and rationalizations that soothe our deep unconscious emotional aguish by simulating a hero’s journey. Even digital mentors like Jordan Peterson are included. The only thing we must do in return is reject life and give in to her embrace. The content is the pill itself, and you mustn’t stop consuming lest you wish to feel again.
So is the conclusion to take the “blue pill” to reject this simulated hero’s journey trap? Taking the blue pill feels like a pathetic choice, to remain blind and ignorant to the truth. This is by design, part of the fraudulent scheme, fooling ourselves with the notion that to take the blue pill means to give up our heroic quest for the truth in exchange for ignorant bliss. But in reality, taking the blue pill means giving up the illusion, returning to our physical bodies and environment which have now become the truly unknown.
On that topic, I believe it is the black pill that was the first to break off from the binary choice of red and blue. The same way your tolerance for a real drug goes up, your unconscious mind adapts to the constant use of the Red Pill and you need the “stronger stuff” to keep it numb. The choice of color being very obvious: it is the void of losing hope. The realization that whatever you were chasing in the depths of the information ocean is not treasure, but junk that will not change your life in any meaningful way. Yet at the same time rejecting to bring yourself back to fully living life, instead doubling down in diving deeper and deeper into this virtually synthesized depression. To overdose on this pill can result in the ultimate, irreversible rejection of life.
However, MemeAnalysis mentioned in that same video that eventually your psyche will balance itself out. That is because while the quest for the digital holy grail is a very circuitous death trap, there is an overarching story on top that is worth telling. A battle between the physical and digital realms is taking place for the locus of “real” reality. Whichever realm wins will dictate how we live life, and how our adventures will look like. There is no right or wrong, but when one is aware of the illusions, they stop being deceptions and instead a conscious choice.
“He who looks outward dreams. He who looks inward awakens.” And he who becomes aware of this choice has the potential to be a hero. So you ought to remember: memes mat(t)er.
If this topic is of great interest to you, I recommend you check out LC Douglass blog post and of course, the MemeAnalysis channel linked above.